Google Search Console...Excluded Pages

[Alfuzzy]

Here's a topic that's weighed heavily on my mind for quite some time...and would love to get a definitive answer so I can rest more easily...or if possible...do something about it.

My site was migrated from vBulletin 4.2.5 to XF 2.1 about 2 months ago. I generally keep a close eye on Google Analytics & Google Search Console.

Now that my site is running on a nice fresh/clean/efficient/modern install of XF...what has always bugged me Big-Time...was the rather large number of "Excluded" pages mentioned in the Google Search Console's "Index > Coverage" area.

Here's a screenshot of the Google Search Console numbers I'm referring to:




Since the site is now running on XF 2.1...and there are lots of XF experts here...does this rather large "Excluded" number seem ok/normal?

Thanks

 

[Anatoliy]

That bothered me too, that I have like 5 times more excluded, than valid. I even tried to remedy it, until I found in Google docs "Excluded are not errors, don't try to fix them".

 

[Alfuzzy]

I've never seen Google Search Console "Coverage" numbers for other websites...thus didn't know if my numbers were unusual or not.

I'm not an expert on this...but I'm thinking that Internet Forums could be way different from other websites (way more pages/URL's)...and maybe Google treats what it see's with Internet forums differently compared to other sites (and results in this large number of Excluded pages).

With my site...approximately 75% of the "Excluded" pages fall into one category (according to Google Search Console)...and that category is "Page with Redirect". Thus I didn't know if something was messed up in a .htaccess file...or something else.

With an almost brand new install of XF 2.1...and database migration from my old vBulletin site...I was hoping all was as "correct" as possible...and Google Search Console would be as "happy" as possible.

 

[Anatoliy]

Why you decided it's not happy? )
It discovered redirects from old vB urls to new canonical xF urls. It listed new as valid, it listed old as excluded.
wait and you'll see as G will add links to individual posts to excluded. you'll have 10m of excluded. )

 

[Alfuzzy]

I should have mentioned that the large 'Excluded" Google Search Console number is about the same as it was before the site was migrated to XF (from vBulletin).

 

[Anatoliy]

the point is - don't pay attention to excluded.
here is an example. I have 20k listed as valid and 100k as excluded. 20k of them are redirects.



Your post above has url https://xenforo.com/community/threads/google-search-console-excluded-pages.185318/post-1460972
but it redirects to https://xenforo.com/community/threads/google-search-console-excluded-pages.185318/#post-1460972

very soon a lot of your post urls(redirects) will be listed as excluded. and that's just 1 example out of many.